


Tomorrow

by Farmboy



Series: Unfinished Business [2]
Category: Farscape
Genre: Dark, Disturbing Themes, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 21:43:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/602380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Farmboy/pseuds/Farmboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short glimpse into the suffering of Chiana and Rygel after they left Moya at the end of Season 3's "Dog With Two Bones". Chiana struggles with her new journey and destination after leaving Moya. Rygel clings to false hopes. Then dreams are shattered. Things go from bad to worse and they are never the same again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Before

Gloom had settled over her the morning before they discovered there had been a bounty put upon their heads.  
  
Her hair didn't quite settle the way it used to now it had grown longer (how long had it been since they'd left Moya?) and no amount of hair product would ever put it right, so after the hundreth time staring at her unkempt self in the mirror she attacked it with her hands and left it messy with a mischievous smile aimed at her reflection.  
  
"See anything you like?" a voice came from behind her and Chiana's eyes turned from her reflection in the glass cabinet and saw the sycophantic salesman peek underneath her messy hairdo.  
  
Chiana had wanted to ask a question, but the moment she saw him she'd opted out.  
  
"I'm just browsing." she said, but he was barely listening. Rygel was unloading stories upon the man and kept him occupied and distracted from keeping an eye on his shop. The thought of taking a peek in the till crossed her mind.  
  
Gar'Shaam's repair shop was laden with guns and rusted parts displayed in a single aisle going from the front to the back, where a large metal door separated the shadowy shop from the workplace.  
  
Dust twirled visibly within the orange sunbeam that cut through the shop with its blinding rays. Chiana admired the dust for it seemed to dance, but when her eye followed the sunbeam it blinded her and she had to turn away and let her eyes recover.  
  
"Do you have it, or not?" she asked and her question cut right through Rygel's bantering small talk.  
  
She felt as if she was rocking back and forth between uneasy breaths, dragging her feet through the dusty shop as a tingle spread up her spine.  
  
Their eyes lingered on her and she didn't like it. The silence meant expectation. "What?" she said cross.  
  
Rygel asked Gar'Shaam to be excused for a moment as he took Chiana aside. He hissed through his teeth at her, knowing that Gar'Shaam would hear anything more than a whisper.  
  
"What the frell do you think you're doing?"  
  
Chiana was getting tired of watching Rygel sweet talk the sweet talker. They were supposed to have been in the air arns ago.  
  
She was bored, basically, although she wouldn't admit it. She was tired of dwindling, tired of stalling and preparing. She was ready to take the plunge right now, not tomorrow, not the day after that.   
  
Tomorrow she wouldn't feel this rush. She'd lose the feeling and lose her brother forever.   
  
She'd dreamt of him that night. Through blackened and charred rock she'd chased the elusive white blur she remembered seeing in the holovid message, although he didn't look anything different from the day he left her to roam the galaxy on her own.  
  
He smiled at her as if it was a game and beckoned her from the distance.  She heard him even though there was no sound. "Come on!"  
  
But this wasn't a game for her. She stumbled and cried out, but she couldn't find him. His voice had echoed through her mind and when she awoke she felt like punching the walls, punching herself for making her feel like this.  
  
Every moment they waited felt like a moment lost. Nebari space was right around the corner, at least in her mind. She felt trapped, sinking further down with every passing second, until eventually the quicksand would swallow her whole and then she would truly be alone.  
  
"You'd agreed to let me handle this!" Rygel snapped at her through clenched jaws and Chiana refused the Hynerian's touch.   
  
When she avoided his hovering throne sled she bumped backwards into one of Gar'Shaam's products.  
  
"Careful!" the shop owner spoke and he rushed to check whether the product had been damaged. Rygel quickly closed his mouth and mind.  
  
Chiana turned to see the rusty device she had run into. It had felt as if an arm had been poking her in the back.  
  
"What is it?" she asked curious and the greymaned salesman put on his magnifying glasses.  
  
"Are you interested?" Gar'Shaam asked, but Rygel quickly intervened in his new sale.  
  
Chiana peeked around the shop owner and saw a large rusty buste of a Sebacean man with powered down robotic arms attached atop a small tracked vehicle. The features on its fake face were non-present. No eyes or mouth, nor colour, yet still Chiana felt strangely drawn to it.  
  
"Chiana..." Rygel warned stiffly.  
  
Gar'Shaam noticed Chiana's curiosity and he could not resist attempting a new sale.  
  
"How old are you, love?" he asked and again his beady eyes, now magnified through the lenses of his glasses to appear ten times larger, peeked through the mess of her hair.  
  
Shyly she gazed straight back at him in protest, before resuming to examine the rusty machine.  
  
"Old enough." Chiana said and she couldn't help herself but let slip a mischievous smile after she said it. "Does it matter?"  
  
Uneasy, she peeked around him in an instinctive paranoid reflex and she slapped away Rygel's pokes.  
  
"With this machine? Oh, yes. It's an  _Octaris_  scout droid refitted as a pleasure machine. Would you like to try it out?"  
  
Suddenly the sound of a rattling chain came from the other end of the warehouse and approached them at a mechanically precise speed. With it came the clumsy remains of the humanoid once known as the best mechanic in the universe.  
  
"Get off, Sebassas!" Gar'Shaam yelled at the disembodied head in a jar that was staring at them with black and largely dead eyes from the ceiling. "Go away!"  
  
The bloated head was barely floating anymore in the acids that kept it fresh and was lying on its side with its cheek against the glass. Chiana would've sworn she caught it blinking.  
  
The shop owner drove it away, beating at the mechanical arm that was attached to the bottom of the travelling jar, until it scurried off across the metal rail into the direction it came from.  
  
"I apologize..." Gar'Shaam said, gasping for breath and wiping the sweat off his brow.   
  
Chiana somehow still heard the weirded out voices of Crichton and D'Argo, her former travelling companions, in her head, even though she had left Moya. In situations like this she missed their childish wonder and freaky responses.   
  
She wished she had one right now.  
  
"Can we just skip this nonsense?" Rygel intervened with a jerk of his throne sled, implementing a new business strategy. "We're not buying the sex doll. I thought you were a business man!"  
  
"I am!" Gar'Shaam objected.   
  
Chiana couldn't see why business and sex should be separated. Everyone needs their guilty pleasure...  
  
"You also said you were a professional!" Rygel keenly added and he squinted his eyes.  
  
"I am!" Gar'shaam replied offended and he started squinting back.   
  
It was the way they bantered on this backwater planet.  
  
"Ha!" Rygel finally said when Gar'Shaam blinked and lost the contest. It was the glasses that made him lose, but Rygel, knowingly, would not let go of his advantage.  
  
"Listen!" Gar'Shaam said. "You won't find a more professional mechanic anywhere in Querasha! It's me and my services you want, and I'm the best there is!"  
  
Rygel smirked as he took Gar'Shaam aside to comfort the doubts he had just instilled within him.  
  
"Then by all means, let's proceed with our initial arrangement, shall we?" the Hynerian spoke. "I will settle the price for one engine upgrade for our Pod and one starmap for...let's say, at least 15,000 cubits."  
  
"15,000?! The starmap alone costs that much!" Gar'Shaam said, rejecting his offer and their voices grew softer as they walked away to a more secluded corner of the warehouse, while Chiana remained by the register unsure what to do next.  
  
Then with a tongue against the roof of her mouth she jumped over the counter. Who was she not to take advantage of an ideal opportunity such as this? When was the last time she'd robbed a shop like this, anyway?  
  
Rygel would've objected. She knew her thievery would jeopardize the business arrangement with the shop owner, not to mention draw too much unwanted attention their way.   
  
They needed the engine upgrade more than they needed this pocket money, but Chiana was sick and tired of following the rules. Rygel's rules.   
  
"Frell him."  
  
With a smile and a cleverly concealed hairpin she unlocked the register and smelled the cubits inside.  
  
The pleasure droid watched her without eyes.  
  
In the market square her pockets jingled with cubits. A succesful getaway in glorious yellow starlight shot a final surge of adrenaline and delight through her veins, but her uneasiness did not fade.  
  
The silver-eyed nomads who endured the dust ignored her as they would stray cattle.  
  
Queresha's masked quartermaster was supervising the offloading of imported goods and provisions at the far end of the dock. The newly arrived shipments blocked Chiana's view of the Transport Pod they arrived in and it disoriented her for a moment.   
  
After a sudden jolt of panic she quickly remembered she wasn't lost. There is no way back, only forward.  
  
She'd been to places like this before, seen countless space ports and more bars than her Nebari brain allowed her to store as memories. After so many worlds the experiences have turned blurry. A fun kind of blurry, but blurry nonetheless.  
  
The rush dulled the pain. It always did. The jingling cubits in her pockets now only felt heavy.  
  
She didn't have the patience to wait for Rygel. Passing wheelcarts kicked up the dust and under its cover Chiana scurried and fled back to the Pod, evading the corners of the quartermaster's eyes.  
  
As she ran through the dust she could've sworn she heard accusations of theft yelled from street to street, but maybe that was just her imagination.  
  
She climbed up the steep ladder, crawled through the hatch and upon entering the Pod she heard a beeping noise coming from the communications console.  
  
With a flick of her wrist she activated the voice message that had been left for them. It was the harbourmaster.  
  
 _"Vessel 1373, I hereby inform you that..."_  
  
Chiana wasn't listening. She ended the message mid-sentence and removed it it from the log without hearing the full message.  
  
Tired, she sank down to her knees and let herself fall on her back, even though it hurt. She gazed up at the ceiling of the Transport Pod and focused on her own breathing.  
  
The hustle and bustle of the busy starport outside had been reduced to a whisper inside the craft.  
  
Being alone didn't feel like it did before. In some ways it was better, in others worse.  
  
At the whim of gravity, the cubits started flowing from her pockets and she imagined to be swimming in cubits, even though it was barely a large amount.  
  
"Pocket money." Rygel called it when he returned.  
  
After an arn of business negotiations he'd caught her touching herself in the Pod and she smiled at him from her position. Rygel barely looked, treating it as a minor nuisance.  
  
She zipped up and skipped towards the hovering toad eager to know more. She'd already heard the mechanics tinker with the Pod's outsides. She assumed them to be upgrading the engines now.  
  
"Look what I got." she said and she threw a handful of cubits into the air which showered down on the Hynerian's brow.  
  
"Up to your old tricks, I see?" Rygel commented, but Chiana was unaffected by his sardonic tone. "Yet while you were robbing tills for pocket money I managed to cut the price for our required repairs in half!"  
  
"Good for you." Chiana said.  
  
"Yes," Rygel spoke. "You may consider that my final parting gift to you..."  
  
"What?"  
  
"I'm leaving. I've procured myself a nice little ship for myself from Gar'Shaam down by the border of Queresha. He's arranged for me to be smuggled back into Hynerian space by freighter. Bishaan will regret the day I reclaim my place as Dominar!"  
  
It sounded too good to be true, but Chiana just couldn't seem to get herself to criticize her friend's wishful thinking.  
  
Huh. She called him a 'friend'.  
  
"So that's it?" Chiana asked.   
  
"That's it, or did you want more?" Rygel said.   
  
The fallen cubits all felt so silly now, so out of place. She wanted to laugh, but the moment wouldn't let her. She was about to lose another friend.  
  
She fought back the tears, intent on hiding them, for Rygel did not deserve them.  
  
"What about me?" she asked and her voice cracked.  
  
"Reluctant shipmate, valued travelling companion...Chiana." he spoke and for a moment Chiana thought he was going to get mushy on her.   
  
"You'll be fine." Rygel spoke. "That's what we are you and me. Survivors."  
  
It sounded easier than it really was.  
  
"And thieves." Chiana added with a smile.  
  
"Yes..." Rygel smirked. "That too."  
  
When Rygel zoomed away on his hovering chair Chiana honestly thought that that would be the last she would ever see of Dominar Rygel the Sixteenth of Hyneria.  
  
Uploading the starmap he had given her into the navigational computer she set out on a vector toward Nebari space and after checking all the Pod's systems and new capabilities, and after being granted clearance by the harbourmaster and traffic control, she punched in hetch 9 and lived as if there was no tomorrow, just like Neri taught her.  
  
But she would never find him.


	2. After

Rygel had to wash his hands before he was allowed entrance into the inner sanctum. He did so carefully and neatly under the watchful eye of his brutish escort.

Dignified underneath a thick layer of bruises he returned to his hovering throne to exude a calm sigh.

"I am ready."

Blue light reflected within trembling droplets that hung from the stalactites by a thread of tears that shone like diamond.

Further on through the mosaic tiled cavern of cold fire they formed a veil of droplets, like suspended rain, and when Rygel passed these watery curtains were lifted.

Beyond the doorway lay the centre chamber of the forgotten temple. Rygel recognised the altar that stood at the far end of the room as the last remaining testament to the cavern's bloody history.

Through a hole in the floor they looked down upon the casino floor below where the commonfolk squabbled and played without ever looking up.

Rygel did not know who to address, so he spoke to the air and let them decide.

"I am Dominar Rygel the Sixteenth, the rightful ruler of the Hynerian Empire."

The bearded man scoffed. "Yes, so you have said. Why are you here, Dominar?"

Rygel purposely played with the silence and casually lowered his hovering throne so he could examine the jewelry and trinkets that stood upon the disused altar. He could see his own bruised and swollen eye in the reflection of the crystals.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, to lose the bounty hunters in the crowd, to vent some steam and play some games. They still had enough currency to toy with and to invest and Chiana still had her pocket money.

"I'm looking to inquire some information about an employee of mine." Rygel spoke to the leather-clad mobsters without looking up from the clean crystals. 

"A girl. Goes by the name of Chiana." Rygel added, knowing that he had to tread lightly from now on. Too much information in the wrong hands got them in this situation in the first place.

The beacons had been everywhere, every street corner, every bar, every market square, telling all about the bounty on their heads and their involvement in the deaths of thousands...

Rygel watched the Sebacean in the crystal's reflection. His sideways glance to his chief of security told Rygel all he needed to know.

"Chiana? Never heard of her." 

Without a word, the bearded Sebacean told his men to leave.

"I was told she was seen entering the casino," Rygel spoke and he dared to move closer to the powerful man and he avoided the chasm in the floor. 

"What does she look like?" 

Rygel peered back into the Sebacean's silver eyes. He'd caught his name in rumors and whispers around the casino floor. Moro'men, he thought it was. 

"Nebari girl. Dressed in leather. Lacks subtlety."

Moro'men smiled. "I don't recall such a girl. Are you sure she entered my establishment?"

Rygel had to veer away when a service girl entered carrying a tray of grapes.

"So I was told." he said.

She moved behind his chair and he leaned back to pick a grape from her tray.

"Maybe you are...." he said and he bit the grape, its cracked surface spilling juice all over his bearded chin. He wiped himself clean. "...misinformed."

He glanced at the doorway. Time was running out.

"I'm willing to pay handsomely for the information." Rygel interjected, drawing the man's attention back to him and he threw a bag of credits at his feet.

Moro'men looked down. "That's a lot of money for a girl. Are you looking or are you buying? This is not a slave auction, Dominar."

"Slaves do not interest me. Only results."

"Pity. You'll find neither here." Moro'men said. "Pick up your money, Dominar, and leave. Or do you want me to pick it up for you?"

Rygel did not take his mockery kindly, but from the comforts of his hovering chair there was nothing the tiny Dominar could do. Except throw more money.

The bag landed closer, right between Moro'men's feet.

"10,000 brandar tiles." Rygel said.

Moro'men got up from his seat with a vengeance and grabbed the Hynerian's throat. He gurgled within the man's grip.

"I have no need for your currency, slug," he told him. "If I wanted it, I simply would've taken it. Dominar...Your title doesn't mean anything here. They're just words..."

Rygel lunged and bit Moro'men's finger when he pointed it at him and quickly two security guards came and pulled Rygel from his thronesled and beat him up.

He squirmed on the floor in pain, but Moro'men wasn't through with him yet. He lifted him off the floor in the same vice grip and held him above the chasm in the floor.

"How the mighty have fallen..." he said and he dropped him. Rygel fell through layers and layers of sediment before the air widened and he crashed atop the Ke'rett game table, credits scattered and the croupier jumped from his seat as more came tumbling from the ceiling. 

Rygel's breathing had turned to wheezes as his feeble body lay there, too heavy for him to lift. But he had to.

He was escorted outside, thrown into the back alley where he collapsed with no-one left to call for, nowhere left to hide...

Is this what he escaped the meat train for? Is this why he had gnawed his way through thick rope for, for three straight weeks?

After Gar'shaam's brother brought him down Queresha's southern border he had sold him to two bounty hunters who packed him aboard the interstellar freight train towards the Outer Rim colonies. 

When he finally bit through the ropes he managed to jump off the train at the second starport it made its stop and find his way back to Queresha.

Rygel fled back to the Transport Pod just as he had done before with every bone in his body at breaking point and with only his survival instinct to drive him home.

"Chiana?"

He thought he saw her, but he couldn't have. He thought he must be hallucinating. Finally his mind must've cracked!

But no, it was really her. At first he was terrified of being seen, then he was thrilled to see her alive (and still capable of helping him), but that turned to anger once he realized all he endured at the casino was for nothing.

"Chiana!" he yelled at her through clenched teeth. She wasn't listening. She wasn't seeing him. It was like she was somewhere else, some other world, passing through like a ghost, a crying ghost, a ghost that was pushing away his throne sled.

"Chiana!" He would've scolded her if it wasn't clear something had happened. Something bad.

Rygel beckoned her to enter the Pod, fly out of there, but Chiana wouldn't stop walking, moving, screaming at the night...

Her leg was bandaged, limping through the dust, but she couldn't find it in her to care. Today the bigger pain dulled the little pains. Tomorrow was yesterday.

"No." she told Rygel.

The return of her eyesight, though blurred, was a small victory amidst a field of defeat. 

It wasn't worth it. She endured. It's all she ever did and she would kick the next guy in the face who would make her endure more.

Like Rygel, she had fallen, only she was still falling, weightless, eyeless, floorless, flying into the cold as sharp edges scraped every part of her body and she knew the moment she hit the ground that they'd dumped her.

But she didn't want to stop falling. She didn't want to stop moving, because that meant it was all over.

Her leg. Her foot got stuck at the edge as they pushed her and she felt it twist beyond control.

She didn't know where she was at first, dragged with bound hands into the cold, then heat again as a mighty hum roared beneath metal.

She'd heard them talking. They had to get rid of her. They had to make her --the problem-- go away.

She tried, kicking and screaming, using up all the strength she had left to resist the brutish touch that carried her through the thick air, past the hum of the engines and toward the blurry, bright light at the end of the craft.

Light. That's when she realized she could see again. She blinked and blinked but the shapes just wouldn't sharpen and then finally as the cold wind rushed past her face she saw the grey sky looking down at her with indifference.

It was the only consolation they would get. The crash came with a sudden touch of finality and she found herself writhing amongst all the other garbage at the city dump, fading into the reek of filth like all the other discarded items.

She had screamed.

In the street beside Rygel she could still feel the dried spit on her face. With a gloved hand she tried to scratch it off her cheek, first slowly, than more frantically with each stroke, desperate to get that frelling man's touch off her body. Her cheek turned blue.

She knew she would find a way out of that junkyard. She just knew it.

The bruises would heal, she reckoned, the bones would mend, the clumps of hair they'd pulled from her skull would grow back.

This frelling dump would just be another place, just another crappy planet, another blurred experience...

"Chiana, what happened to you?" Rygel asked, but there were no words left in her vocabulary. All she could do was yell. 

She couldn't control it. She didn't want to. She wanted to kick and kill and kick it again. Kill it again.

Her anger had given her the strength to crawl her way out of that pit, to kick her way out of that trench, although every spurt of energy came at a strenuous price.

Every few metras she would collapse, drained, break into pieces and pretend to rest, to fool her body into thinking it was going to stop, the pain was going to stop, and it never did.

Her breathing never slowed, her chest heaving faster than her heart could beat and it would never stop hurting. Ever.

"Those bastards just flew away..." Chiana muttered and she didn't recognise her own cracked voice. "They thought they could dump me...they're so wrong. They're so frelling wrong."

Her leg gave way and buckled under her weight, finally succumbing to the pain and it could no longer hold her up. The adrenaline was fading. Rygel was here and it meant that it was over. She could no longer pretend.

It had really happened. The nightmare was real.

Her face had fallen flat on the brick road, sticking to the nightly frost with tears streaming down her face and her black eyes gazed at nothing because they did not want to see...

"Chiana, listen to me!" Rygel said. "Let's get out of here while we still can! At least you're still alive! You survived...!"

Chiana punched Rygel in the face and he knew he deserved it.


End file.
